The robot, which has a 3D-printed face, can read social signals.
Photograph: Furhat Robotics AB

It’s the stuff beloved of science fiction: a robot that looks and sounds like a human being. A robot you can chat with, that recognises when you are sad, and that can cheer you up with its jokes.

But is that prospect so distant from reality? Samer Al Moubayed, and his colleagues at Furhat Robotics, are attempting to make it happen.

The “conversational AI and social robotics” startup, founded in Stockholm in 2014, has developed Furhat OS – an operating system that goes some way to allowing people to interact with machines the same way we interact with each other. The operating system doesn’t just enable you to have a conversation with a robot. It’s so sophisticated that the robots can read social signals and gauge your emotions.

The operating system can be put inside a 3D-printed mask that resembles whoever you want it to resemble, complete with the ability to “see”, “hear” and “speak” to make it feel like you’re interacting with another human. A mini projector inside the robot’s head creates the facial expressions.

“We operate in this area called social robotics,” says Al Moubayed, CEO and co-founder. “This crazy idea that if you create a machine that looks and sounds like people you can use them in extremely unique and valuable ways.” Al Moubayed and co-founders Gabriel Skantze, Jonas Beskow and Preben Wik met and worked closely together at Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, starting what he describes as an “intellectual quest”.

“We did our research in trying to understand humans so we can create machines that interact with humans the way humans interact with each other,” says Al Moubayed.

Furhat is about fitting all the pieces together, he says, combining machines that can speak, understand and even have “bodies”. “With Furhat what we are trying to create is that final stage and bring that machine to the physical world – a robot that can sit with you, understand your physical space, interact with more than one person.”

Last year the company, which has 17 employees, raised finance from Balderton Capital and LocalGlobe. It is working with global businesses such as Disney, Intel and KPMG, and, in partnership with Deutsche Bahn, has launched a multi-lingual robot concierge at Frankfurt Airport, which can provide information to passengers on departure times and give directions to places in the airport.

But creating the stuff of science fiction doesn’t come without its obstacles. “We have challenges on every front,” says Al Moubayed. “Building a social robot means building a machine that looks like us. Whenever people see a robot they have a lot of assumptions about how it should look, how it should behave – just because the robot looks like a human people expect it to behave like a human.

“They expect it to know everything a normal human would – common sense, humour etc, so that’s a lot of very high expectations. And then of course we have this problem of building the company,” he adds. “How can we get the robot out there, build the supply chain, partner with companies to invest in social robots before there are applications for them?”

While Furhat is making the operating system, it’s other companies and organisations that are likely to come up with applications for its use. Asked what some of its everyday uses could be, Al Moubayed is reticent to speculate but says: “There are some obvious markets. One is having robots in schools, robots talking with the kids about chemistry and geography, so a much more engaging experience. Or robots for language learning.”

The startup has developed a pilot in Swedish schools featuring an interactive educational quiz game, and also has a partnership with Honda involving the development of a “smart” care home for older people.

Psychologically [the robots are] are very close to us which causes us to panic - it questions our purpose in life

One of the biggest challenges, though, might be the fear that comes alongside the science fiction – that robots might end up taking over. It’s an issue Al Moubayed agrees needs to be discussed. “We are extremely engaged in this economic, ethical and social conversation,” he says. Technology like this comes with risks that shouldn’t be ignored, he says, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue it.

“This isn’t something that we should stop working on but we should be responsible in talking about it and understanding the consequences so we can focus on the positive impact. We should have this conversation, it should be public – we should think about the consequences of everything, the job market, the economic system.”

There’s also something unnerving about a robot that resembles a human. It’s natural that we’ll fear something that looks and behaves like us, Al Moubayed says. “We’re trying to understand what’s unique about humans and to replicate it. Psychologically it’s very close to us, which causes us to panic, that’s a very natural reaction – it questions our purpose in life.”

He argues that instead of listening to that fear we should instead focus on the ways this technology can help give us back that ever-elusive commodity – time. “There are so many ways we can use this tech for the better, we can think of applications that make people more social, whether it’s children or the elderly.

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